Home Is the Soldier...
After a few weeks off, I drove back to Washington, D.C., and Fort Meade, Maryland, where I would be stationed for the rest of my mercifully brief Army career. But I did not really leave Vietnam and may never fully leave. I continued until November, 1969, to translate documents and messages from that war-ravaged country. Through assassinations that rocked the United States to moon landings and peace marches and the greatest rock concert in the history of the world, I worked at the National Security Agency until, in November, 1969, the Agency denied me access to classified information. That’s a fairly long story and it played out through the remainder of 1968 and almost all of 1969.
Before returning to Fort Meade, though, I had two weeks’ leave in Beaumont, Texas. I took some long hikes in the Big Thicket, visited friends, managed almost to forget the war though the news was full of it, sounds and images. I got drunk much more than I should have. There are some great bars back in the Thicket. While there, I bought a used Volkswagen convertible and took a few days to drive to Fort Meade. I wanted to get out of Beaumont, get out of Texas. I continued to care for my friends there, but nothing seemed quite like it was. Beaumont had not changed, but I had.
When my Pan American flight home from Vietnam ("freedom bird") landed in San Francisco and I walked through the airport, I had half expected to be accosted by hippies who would call me a baby killer or, at least, try to make me feel guilty for my tour in Vietnam. That had not happened. I’ve come, over the years, to think a lot of the stories I’ve heard about Vietnam veterans’ returns to “the World” have been grossly exaggerated. No one said a word to me even though I was in uniform.
It was, I grant you, different, more lonely, than I see in airports today. Believe me, I’m glad to see this, but today, total strangers approach men and women in uniform and thank them for their service. They deserve that gratitude even though their war today, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not much more popular than ours was.
Years later, after the first of the Persian Gulf Wars, when some communities started to hold parades for returning GIs and invited Viet Vets to participate I felt vaguely upset by the whole thing. I edited a book instead, A Measured Response, a collection of poems written by poets who were Vietnam vets and dealt with their feelings about Desert Storm. Some good writers participated in that book: Luis Rodriguez, W.D. Ehrhart, Charles Fishman, David Jauss, Renny Christopher, dozens more.
In my introduction to that book, I wrote: A few years ago, as I watched the beginnings of countless parades celebrating the victory of allied forces in the Persian Gulf War, I heard people talking about the Vietnam vets and how they were being welcomed back through the openness and good cheer of the Desert Storm celebrations. Frankly, I didn’t see it….Coming home from a conference in Utah, [I saw] a young (how very young!) Desert Storm vet two seats in front of me. I couldn’t help smiling when I saw his friends and relatives in the airport with signs welcoming him home. I walked out to my car and drove to my own home in San Antonio.
Washington, D.C., in 1968 and 1969 was wonderful. A few friends and I rented an apartment off post in Silver Spring because we were planning to take classes at the University of Maryland in the evenings. We were in what would probably be considered very low-cost housing at a place called Chillum Heights (not the image one normally gets when speaking of Silver Spring, but still). We kept our lockers in the barracks at “C” Company ASA and commuted in each morning to work at the building and managed to make inspections and roll call when necessary.
I suppose the real reason we went to U of Maryland was to have a better opportunity to meet young women. But I did take classes: one on Renaissance literature and one on Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both were excellent classes. And I did meet a wonderful young woman, Linda, in the renaissance lit. class.
Somehow, during that first year back from Vietnam, I managed to stay in good standing with the military. I was assistant section chief for my section at NSA and they courted me to transfer to civilian status when I got out of the Army. They promised me that if I converted, I would have the rank of GS-9 with a promotion a year later. “Converted”? Sounds religious and many of them were very religious about their jobs.
I had a number of military people and civilians under me in the Building: some were NCOs and junior-grade officers, one warrant officer. I was a Spec-5. The Army did not like it when officers and sergeants reported to Spec-5s. They're kind of hung up on the rank thing. NSA didn’t care. My job was to assign translations to other people in my section and assist them when necessary.
As a result of all that, the C.O. of my company called me in one day for a serious discussion about my future. He asked me to apply for a direct commission. I said no. He asked why. I told him I wanted to get out when I was supposed to and taking the commission would extend my stay in the Army and make me eligible to be called back up for years afterwards. He got pissed. I didn’t care.
I had a similar conversation about converting with my section chief at NSA. I told him I wanted to go back to graduate school. He said I could do that at the University of Maryland while working at NSA. He said I was needed. I asked him for how long. He didn’t understand my question. I suggested that maybe we would not be in Vietnam forever (I was almost wrong about that!) and that NSA might not need so many linguists forever. He said they’d teach me another language. I said I wanted to be an English teacher. He said we’d talk again later. We never did.
Meanwhile, I felt very much like a civilian. I went to work in the mornings in civilian clothes and then drove home to Chillum Heights after work. Usually, I would get together with Linda in the evenings, go out with her on the weekends. Some weekends, I did have to participate in parades and inspections, but most of the time, my weekends were my own. I had a great time though the war kept causing problems.
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